Rotary silk screen printing machines of this type are e.g. known from EP 396 924 B1 or EP 522 640 A1.
Drive technology for rotary silk screen printing machines, has envolved over the last five to ten years, to include the use of individual motors for positioning and driving the individual printing cylinders and associated therewith the increasing use of electronic drive components. In the early stages of this development machines of this type equipped with stepping motors individually associated with the printing mechanisms (cf. EP 396 924 B1) were only developed as top of the line products in addition to the known, so-called geared machines and were gradually provided with additional different electronic functions, in order to take account of the general trend towards automation. This new, individual drive technology developed rapidly to form the general standard, so that presently purely mechanical machines have almost disappeared from the market. Also printing machines with a low degree of automation nowadays have in a virtually obvious manner this technology developed as "single drive technology". This is technically implemented by the use of stepping motors or servomotors, equipped with the necessary electronic control or setting for ensuring an adequate synchronous running and a corresponding degree of automation, also through the incorporation of additional actuators, sensors and operating means, together with service and control elements for each individual printing cylinder, which must be electrically connected by means or a large number of cable connections with the generally separately set up control means often several metres away. Even though the comprehensive equipping of each printing station nowadays simplifies and facilitates the production of material to be printed, there are still numerous practical difficulties and disadvantages.
As printing systems of the aforementioned type must generally be equipped with more than ten printing stations, the manufacture, fin situ installation and in particular the subsequent maintenance prove very costly and difficult, so that only specially trained experts are able to study, handle and maintain such systems. Such high capital costs for the operator of such systems must be added additional extra expenditure for installation, commissioning and continuous servicing by expensive specialists. This clearly runs counter to the requirement for highly productive capital products resulting from competition and high costs, which permit the production with low running costs, maximum quality standards and minimum maintenance-caused production shutdowns.